


to be alone

by sardonicgrin



Category: All For The Game - Nora Sakavic
Genre: Domestic Fluff, M/M, Post-Series, antagonizing nicky
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-17
Updated: 2018-09-17
Packaged: 2019-07-13 07:51:29
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,167
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16013540
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sardonicgrin/pseuds/sardonicgrin
Summary: It was only three months ago when Neil suggested they pick up another language— something that was insular, private, theirs— and Andrew proposed Russian.





	to be alone

i.

Neil and Andrew are firm and unyielding in the way they are knitted together. They are scar tissue, the remnants of reclaimed violence on their bodies. They share sharp, jagged things between them: the ugliness of being nothing, their mutual lack of self-preservation, the quiet defiance of their survival. 

They share softer things, now, too. Neil is sprawled out on his bed he shares with Andrew, half-lying on his multivariable calculus textbook and his turned over copy of Anna Karenina. Both are ignored in favor of listening to Andrew, who sits upright against the wall on the other side of the bed while he reads out Russian grammar exercises. The hand not holding his book lies folded, forgotten, over Neil’s ankle. 

Neil privately loves the furrow that appears in Andrew’s brow when he tries stubbornly, and fails each time, to pronounce the word for envelope. A warm gale of night air comes through the open window and ruffles the pages. Neil smells white jasmine and dogwood and closes his eyes.

ii.

They’re alone in the dorm when Neil invites Andrew to play something with him, a first-person shooter game that Nicky and Aaron often play. Andrew, too, judging by the rapid, practiced clicks of his joystick and the ease with which he evades Neil. The controls still feel clumsy in Neil’s hands even after Nicky’s careful instruction. 

It hadn’t always been that way. Neil reaches back into the recesses of his memory and thinks about a game he played as a child before everything went to hell, something on the SNES his mother gave him. He remembers intimately the controller’s D-pad inputs, the bite of its edges into his palms when he squeezed too tightly. He wonders if he could still pick up exactly where he left off, as if those twenty-two names in-between had never happened. He wonders if things could ever be that easy. 

They’re alone, but not for long. Even now, Neil carefully distances himself from Andrew in the company of others. The foxes’ measured disbelief from that spring has taken on a different, but still uninvited, curiosity. Nicky talks about what they have like he has no sense of tactfulness to speak of. Aaron still voices his displeasure, but Neil volleys back his own cutting retorts just as easily. Kevin keeps —mercifully— quiet, which is surprising, given his misgivings about it before. Maybe he recognizes some kind of merit in this, like Andrew’s begrudging cooperation on the court, or maybe it just registers low on the list of his concerns. 

Something so personal being taken apart and examined by someone else, even a fox, still compels Neil to shield it. So when he hears Nicky cut the shower off in the bathroom, Neil moves away. Andrew doesn’t comment but shifts and sinks deeper into his seat.

For a quiet moment, they’re absorbed in the game. Then Andrew says, “When Nicky walks in, laugh at something I say.” 

Neil gives him a puzzled look. “Okay.”

Like clockwork, Nicky emerges from the bathroom in a cloud of steam and chirps a greeting. Without looking away from the screen, Andrew gestures a careless hand towards him and tells Neil the days of the week in Russian conspiratorially. Neil laughs faithfully, giving Nicky pause. 

It was only three months ago when Neil suggested they pick up another language— something that was insular, private, theirs— and Andrew proposed Russian. Neil’s voice still sounds haltingly Germanic when his tongue curls around the Cyrillic letters, but there is no urgency like there was in Munich or in the tense whispers behind closed doors in Marseilles. Just Andrew, their knees touching in that careful way when they sit cross-legged on Neil’s bed, echoing each other’s words.

Now Neil returns Andrew’s words with some of his own, a declarative statement about the weather that he inflects like a question. He sneaks a furtive glance towards Nicky and smoothly shifts his gaze back to the screen when they meet eyes. Out of the corner of his eye, Nicky turns away and braces an arm across his bare chest. The defensive gesture draws a genuine laugh from Neil, who wasn’t expecting the trick to work.

His carelessness is punished immediately. On Neil’s half of the screen, his character is cut down by an NPC after sustaining too many hits. The screen turns red when he crumples to the ground.

“You’re bad at this,” Andrew says, still in Russian. 

“Nicky is bad at teaching.”

“Nicky is bad at most things.” Neil snorts.

“Really, Neil,” Nicky huffs. “I expected this from Andrew, but not you.” They turn towards him in unison as if noticing him for the first time, Neil schooling his features into something innocent. He groans. “You two are so insufferable.”

Abandoning his controller, Neil settles for toying with the sleeve of Andrew’s shirt and says, thoughtful, “He’s not bad at everything. You turned out okay.” Andrew gives Neil an unmistakably skeptical look before returning his attention to the screen. “How much longer do we keep this up?”

“Not much longer, it appears.” Andrew nudges Neil in the side and jerks his chin towards Nicky. When Neil turns, he sees Nicky getting to his feet and pulling on a clean shirt from their heap of unsorted laundry. 

“I’m leaving,” he says in that way he does, turning away like a child who wants to be followed.

Andrew’s arm is an easy weight draped across Neil’s shoulder. “Leave, then,” he says in English.

“Rude. I’ll go see what my favorite twin is doing.”

It’s stupid, but Neil feels grateful when he realizes the privacy their charade has afforded them. 

There’s something like a tenuous balance in his past and present, and Neil’s thoughts lead to Nathaniel playing with his D-pad controller, then Abram using his heavy racket with the shallow net. Stefan with his Kevlar vest. Neil with his promises. The broken continuity of his past is small in the face of the future he has carved out for himself.

They hear the door shut behind them. Carefully, he touches the soft sliver of Andrew’s wrist that wasn’t covered by fabric and murmurs a question he’s gotten so good at asking.

iii.

It stirs a faint memory, the way Neil has to stretch his vocabulary to get his point across in a new language, the mild frustration of pulling at a tether too short. It’s rarer nowadays that he’s ever at a loss for words, as mouthy as he is, but Russian is effective at clipping his sentences. 

“Are you hungry?” Neil asks Andrew in Russian that morning. “I have a,” he pauses to rifle through his vocabulary, “bumpy pear. In the fridge.” Andrew stares at him. He makes a circle the size of a tennis ball with his hands. “Bumpy pear?” he repeats unhelpfully. “It’s green.”

Andrew looks wholly unimpressed. “Avocado,” he guesses correctly. The same word in Russian as it is in English. “And no.”

“Suit yourself.” And because he’s feeling particularly fond of the sight of Andrew soft and ruffled with sleep, he adds in English, “I can make those cinnamon pancakes you like, if you want.” Andrew considers it for a moment before nodding and leans against the kitchen counter, watchful even under a filmy layer of sleep. He doesn’t say it in so many words, but Neil has a feeling Andrew wants his company a little longer. He feels warm when he turns away.

iv.

In the common area, Neil mops the sweat from his face with the hem of his jersey and ignores the throb in his shoulder. They’re leading the scoreboard by a healthy margin, courtesy of their ruthless gameplay and Andrew’s stalwart defense of the goal, so he allows himself to relax in his seat during halftime. 

Beside him, Andrew drinks quietly from his water bottle. Only the sweat sliding down his neck belies how tired he must be. He’s worked hard. Neil leans in towards him and asks in Russian, “Do you want to stop for dessert on our way home? Cookout brought back that promotional peach cobbler milkshake they had last year.” Andrew grunts noncommittally. “Are you okay? You seem tired.”

“Worry about yourself,” he says. “Your shoulder won’t hold out if you keep landing on it like that.”

“I’ll live.” Neil grins and leans in close. “Are you going to ice it for me afterwards?”

Andrew pushes his face away. “Don't flatter yourself.”

“Ten bucks says they’re whispering sweet nothings to each other,” Matt says to Nicky. Sharing a dorm room together has made them a formidable pair both on court and in Neil’s personal life.

“Ten bucks says they’re dirty talking,” Nicky counters.

“Please,” Allison cuts in from the opposite couch. “Like Andrew would ever readily admit to romancing his boy. Besides, that’s not what they’re saying.”

“Oh yeah? And how would you know?”

“Isn’t it obvious?” Aaron says. “They’re trying to figure out how quickly they can bail as soon as this match is over.”

“Kevin, do you want to weigh in on this?” Matt asks. “You would know better than anyone.” It’s true; between sharing a room with them and their routine night practices, Kevin is with the two of them more often than not.

Kevin glances up from lacing his court shoes. “No.”

“You’re all wrong,” Neil says. And just to be annoying, he adds, “We were talking about what to get Nicky for his birthday this year.”

“No way,” Matt and Aaron say simultaneously.

Aaron regards them with suspicion, but Nicky mows right over his disbelief. “You’re getting a gift for me? Like, collectively? Together? I mean, that’s cute, but, come on. Don’t be stingy. Unless it’s expensive. Neil is it expensive?”

“Their cherry cobbler milkshake is better,” Andrew says at last, returning Neil’s attention to him.

“I’m inclined to disagree.”

“Aw, Neil, don’t be like that.” Soundly ignored by Neil, Nicky wheedles Andrew for more information, who is unsympathetic.

v.

Neil is relentless in his own way.

Andrew is straddling him in their bedroom in Columbia. They haven’t graduated beyond above the waist touches yet, but Neil sets a slow, mesmerizing pace with his hands, as if the night air isn’t stifling with heat already. Andrew breathes in fire. Softly articulated words of praise leave Andrew burning to look away, but he holds his ground. 

One hand travels up to cup his jaw, tender, before smoothing down his collarbone and over his chest again. His hand finds its way Andrew’s nipple and touches it the way he likes. The light feathering scrape of his thumbnail is at odds with the warm, circling strokes of his fingertips. Andrew’s entire body tingles. He wants the heat of Neil’s mouth on his neck. He wants— 

Andrew struggles. Sweat pools in the dimples of his back. Overhead, the ceiling fan does little more than circulate the sticky air. Hands spread flat against his stomach, high enough to be safe but low enough that his muscles twitch. The pressure of Neil’s thigh underneath him is only too welcoming even through a layer of denim when Andrew starts to rock his hips against him, forgetting himself, and— Neil— keeps looking at him like that, trapping him with the weight of his stare. Andrew closes his eyes, uncharacteristically overwhelmed, as if the sight of Neil is the burning city that would turn him into a pillar of salt.

Neil strokes his side with one hand and says, “Tell me when to stop.” The words are smooth and fluent the way they’re strung together. Familiar. Andrew’s shaking his head. Bowed over he grinds down slow, once, twice, arms trembling to hold himself up until he doesn’t have to anymore— Neil’s hands are there— and he comes straining against his jeans.

vi.

When the ice begins to thaw in the spring of his fourth year, something inside of Andrew gives like the snow sloughing from the branches outside, and he takes a risk. He waits until well into the night when Neil’s breathing evens out, and he says something he shouldn’t. The words come out easily, but that shouldn’t surprise him anymore. The revelation has long since stopped feeling like a hand drawn to a hot stove. Neil, a wonder among wonders, who still has not run after all this time. Neil, who should have been asleep.

“I don’t know that one,” Neil says sleepily, half turning to him, a moonflower in Andrew’s night. Andrew freezes, but he recovers quickly.

“It means go to sleep.” Robin stirs in her bed across from them.

Neil frowns, the gears in his head already turning when he tries to retrieve the right words. “But I thought to go to sleep was—”

“Goodnight.”

“—Schlafen legen?” He squints. “Wait, that doesn’t sound right.”

“Neil.” He could say it again right now. He might. “I’m trying to sleep.”

Neil quiets and burrows back into the comforter, whatever train of thought he was chasing already sequestered to sleep.

Andrew will try again later.

**Author's Note:**

> Andrew and Neil picking up a new language just for each other is Peak Romance.


End file.
